Exclusive: Salt 2 With Angelina Jolie Back In Development
Will it finally happen?
It’s been over a decade since Angelina Jolie originated the role of triple agent Evelyn Salt. In spite of 2010’s Salt teasing a sequel and earning the box office sales to justify a follow-up, you would hardly be blamed, given the time that’s passed, for giving up hope. But our trusted and proven source has informed us that Salt 2 is back in active development, with Angelina Jolie attached to reprise the title role.
We don’t yet know who will be writing or directing Salt 2 and besides Angelina Jolie’s involvement, we don’t have information about the cast. The first film has a fairly high body count–including among the leading cast’s characters–so there might not be a lot of actors from the first film returning. One exception is potentially Chiwetel Ejiofor (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness), who played Darryl Peabody, the counterintelligence agent tasked with capturing Evelyn Salt.
In Salt, the sequel potential is spelled out in as unambiguous terms as possible at the end of the film. The eponymous hero manages to convince Peabody that, in spite of her origin as a Soviet sleeper agent, she’s proven her loyalty. Peabody agrees to let her go so she can hunt down all the other unveiled sleeper agents still waiting out there. Salt 2 would presumably either show Angelina Jolie hunting down those other agents, or–considering the time that’s passed in the real world–chronicle what happens to her after she completes her mission.
As far as why it’s taken this long for a sequel to get off the ground; it certainly hasn’t been for lack of trying. Salt director Phillip Noyce was vocal about his desire to make a sequel even before the thriller hit theaters. But as Looper reports, the first Salt 2 script that got into Angelina Jolie’s hands was rejected by the star. In spite of a rewrite by Becky Johnston (House of Gucci), there was still little movement with the project. Noyce eventually said he was done with Evelyn Salt’s story, and in spite of occasional crumbs of updates, little to no word has surfaced until now.
It’s possible that another factor that has delayed Salt 2‘s development is Angelina Jolie’s shifting priorities. While she certainly hasn’t retired from acting, Jolie has been devoting more time to the director’s chair. In fact, her Eternals co-star Salma Hayek–who Jolie directed in the upcoming Without Blood–recently went so far as to call Jolie “the best director” she’s ever worked with. Considering Hayek’s time on films directed by Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Ridley Scott, and Chloé Zhao, that’s pretty high praise. Jolie has also visibly been stepping up her humanitarian work, including visiting Ukraine during Russia’s invasion of the country.
We don’t yet know when to expect Salt 2 in theaters with Angelina Jolie once more playing the sleeper agent, but we’ll keep our ears to the ground. In the meantime, you can expect her to reprise the title role in the upcoming Maleficent 3, and quite possibly the role of Thena in Marvel’s Eternals 2.
